In this tutorial we are going to install memcached on Ubuntu 21.10.
Memcached is a free and open-source, high-performance distributed memory object caching system. It is use in speeding up dynamic web applications but enabling faster database loading time. It enables you to make better use of your memory by doing load distribution.
The advantage of using Memcached is that, Its powerful, it promote quick deployment of needed applications, makes easy for development because of its cache and its API can easily integrate with other languages.
From a easy point of view, Memcached allows you to take memory from parts of your system where you have more than you need and make it accessible, to areas where its needed.
The best place to run Memcached is on dedicated hosts because you will not have to worry about other programs on the machine from interfering with the Memcached.
Where can we run Memcached?
We run Memcached anywhere from the following:
- Databases
- Web servers
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Installing memcached on Ubuntu 21.10
Installing Memcached on Ubuntu system is easy by using the following command apt install memcached but keep in mind that Ubuntu LTS may have old packages, so you may run into bugs easily. The best option to get and install memcached is to install from the source, here you will be assured you will get the latest version of memcached.
Installing memcached from Ubuntu packages
Lets see how we can install memcached from Ubuntu packages. First you will need to do system updates.
$ sudo apt update && apt upgrade When updates and upgrades are complete, move ahead and install memcached.
Installing memcached on Ubuntu 21.10
To install memcached simply run the following command on your terminal.
$ sudo apt install memcached -ySee the following output
# output
The following NEW packages will be installed:
memcached
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 158 kB of archives.
After this operation, 384 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu impish/main amd64 memcached amd64 1.6.9+dfsg-1build1 [158 kB]
Fetched 158 kB in 6s (25.5 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package memcached.
(Reading database ... 91489 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../memcached_1.6.9+dfsg-1build1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking memcached (1.6.9+dfsg-1build1) ...
Setting up memcached (1.6.9+dfsg-1build1) ...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/memcached.service → /lib/systemd/system/memcached.service.
....We can check the version of memcached installed.
$ memcached --version
memcached 1.6.9 Installing memcached from the source
Installing memcached from the source help avoid running into bugs, it installed the latest version free of bugs.
It requires that we install some dependencies first.
$ sudo apt install libevent-dev -yYou will get the following output.
The following additional packages will be installed:
libevent-core-2.1-7 libevent-extra-2.1-7 libevent-openssl-2.1-7 libevent-pthreads-2.1-7
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libevent-core-2.1-7 libevent-dev libevent-extra-2.1-7 libevent-openssl-2.1-7 libevent-pthreads-2.1-7
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 433 kB of archives.
After this operation, 2345 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] yDownload memcached
Now that we have installed its dependencies, we can now download memcached using wget command.
$ sudo wget http://www.memcached.org/files/memcached-1.6.14.tar.gzLook at the sample output below.
Saving to: ‘memcached-1.6.14.tar.gz’
memcached-1.6.14.tar.gz 100%[===================================>] 1010K 1.25MB/s in 0.8s
2022-02-22 10:32:57 (1.25 MB/s) - ‘memcached-1.6.14.tar.gz’ saved [1034514/1034514]So we are going to extract latest to our system directory.
When download is complete we need to extract the contents from the archives.
$ sudo tar -zxf memcached-1.6.14.tar.gzIf you ls to see the contents you will see that memcached have been extracted.
$ ls
memcached-1.6.14 memcached-1.6.14.tar.gz snapThe next thing is to cd into memcached directory and make install to install memcached.
$ cd memcached-1.6.14Lastly we need to configure, test and make install. We will use the following command.
$ ./configure && make && make test && sudo make install
I am assuming you too are getting the following error when you run the ./configure command
checking build system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking whether make supports nested variables... no
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl.exe... no
configure: error: in `/root/memcached-1.6.14':
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more detailsTo get rid of the error install build essential
$ sudo apt install build-essentialRun ./configure again, this time round no error will be encountered.
When the long process is over, you can check the version of the installed memcached.
$ memcached --version
memcached 1.6.14Start memcached service
In order to start using memcached, lets start the memcached service
$ sudo systemctl start memcachedCheck the service if its running on your system.
sudo systemctl status memcachedWhen you see the below as the output then memcached is running effectively.
$ ● memcached.service - memcached daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/memcached.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2022-02-22 10:58:51 UTC; 26s ago
Docs: man:memcached(1)
Main PID: 24977 (memcached)
Tasks: 10 (limit: 1131)
Memory: 1.3M
CPU: 25ms
CGroup: /system.slice/memcached.service
└─24977 /usr/bin/memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u memcache -l 127.0.0.1 -P /var/run/memcached/memcach>
Feb 22 10:58:51 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started memcached daemon.Conclusion
You have learned how to install memcached on Ubuntu 21.10. Check the memcached documentation for more insight.
